Dina Cappiello, Reporter for the Houston Chronicle

Dina Cappiello is an environmental reporter for the Houston Chronicle who has crowdsourced information-gathering for her own stories. Cappiello used 84 trained volunteer monitors to measure local air toxins for a reported series for the paper.

After the series was published, Cappiello wrote a piece about the motivations of her volunteers:

While some doubted that the newspaper would find anything (one resident said the air quality was excellent), others hoped the study would confirm their worst suspicions and force the companies to stop polluting or else buy their homes so they can move away. Most volunteers said they decided to participate to satisfy a curiosity about what, if anything, is wrong... Others joined the study in an attempt to change the status quo, even it meant risking their employment.

We have a hunch Cappiello might teach us something about why people might volunteer for crowdsourced research projects.